Re: rotary strobe idea

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Greg,

This might work.  You may want to check out:

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Misc/RS-Strobe/RSStrobe.htm

Basically you want the rectifier to charge a cap that has a small drain
resistor across it.  As the voltage nears the peak in the AC cycle, the
rectifer will turn on hard and cause a current spike that the timing light
may pick up.  The rectifier pulse will charge the cap back up to makeup for
the small discharge from the drain resistor.

The AC line does have lots of noise and sags that tend to mess around with
it but it should basically work if the timing light will fire off the
current spike.

Cheers,

	Terry


At 02:09 PM 3/20/2002 +1000, you wrote:
>Hey guys, I came up with this idea for a synchronous strobe, but I'm 
>sure one of the following will be the case:
>
>1. Someone has already thought of it.
>2. It won't work.
>
>Basically my idea is this:
>
>You purchase an automotive timing light which uses an inductive clip to 
>determine when to pulse. You then rectify the house 60/50Hz supply, and 
>attach the resultant rippled DC source to a resistive load to draw some 
>current. The inductive clip for the timing light is placed over the 
>wire, and the strobe should flash at the frequency of the rippled DC. 
>
>This is my theory, the only reason I can see that it may not work, is 
>that the strobe may need a high energy pulse to be activated and this 
>would not be provided by the rippled DC supply. What does everyone 
>think? 
>
>Or what about using a triac, capacitor and ignition coil (similar to 
>TSG arrangement) to power a very cheap automotive timing light that 
>does not use an inductive clip, but only wires in series with the spark 
>plug.
>
>Greg Peters
>Department of Earth Sciences,
>University of Queensland, Australia
>Phone: 0402 841 677
>http://www.geocities-dot-com/gregjpeters
>
>
>